We are often asked this question by prospective students: Why should I choose the Maryland School over other sailing schools? What do you offer that they do not?

 

When Captain Tom Tursi founded the Maryland School of Sailing in 1991, he decided that his purpose as a school was to help people become competent sailors of cruising yachts with the skills to cruise in remote areas away from the immediate support and distractions of modern society.

 

This meant that we'd need to:

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- Offer a full range of courses from basic through ocean sailing.

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- Teach on rugged cruising yachts.

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- Use highly skilled, experienced Captains as instructors.

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- Set up the basic level courses to provide necessary building blocks and pathways to the advanced courses and extended cruising.

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- Develop comprehensive lesson plans and text books meeting our requirements and goals..

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It also defined what we are not:

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- Not yacht brokers.

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- Not a charter company.

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- Not a yacht club.

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- Not day sailors.

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- Not racers.

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As a result, our Basic Keelboat Sailing course is taught over a four day period, while many schools teach this level in two days. We believe that it is not possible to properly teach all of the American Sailing standards and skills for this level and provide the necessary building blocks for advanced levels in less than four days, and students taking abbreviated classes will lack basic skills when attending higher level courses or sailing in the real world on their own.

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Also, we teach this basic level on rugged Island Packet 32 foot cruising yachts representing the type of boats needed for extended live-aboard cruising.  Many schools teach on smaller or lighter boats intended for racing or inland sailing in protected waters, and their students lack the necessary hands-on skills and experience needed as they progress to advanced levels.

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Because of the type of yachts we use, students coming for basic level classes are invited to sleep overnight aboard the training yachts during the class sessions.  While this does avoid hotel and additional travel costs, the true value is the ability to learn something more of the live-aboard experience.  Many students who come to us have never slept aboard a cruising boat before; we feel that is an important part of the lesson.

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Our instructors are hand-picked professionals with many years of extended cruising experience, and they bring a wealth of knowledge and sound advice to our students. They are all USCG licensed with American Sailing instructor certifications for the advanced cruising levels that they teach.

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We also do not short cut the quality or duration of our courses just to grant multiple certifications to students. For example, when properly taught, our Coastal Navigation course takes a full 25 hours of classroom work, not including the examination, and our Advanced Coastal Training Cruise takes a full seven days and 400 miles to complete. Some schools combine both of these into one onboard course of one week and maybe 100 miles, and the student gets both certifications but not the necessary level of training for advanced or independent sailing.

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We pride ourselves on teaching both sailing and seamanship.  Most schools can teach you to sail; we feel that it is far more important to teach you seamanship - the ability to handle a boat in whatever conditions you find yourself in, safely and comfortably.  Maintenance, navigation, watch standing, provisioning, weather awareness are all subjects that require more training, more exposure, than can be explored in a couple of days or a week.

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We've also developed a number of specialized instructional text books to augment the American Sailing course manuals, since we teach many topics well above the American Sailing standards in order to support our advanced program. Two of Tom’s text books have been recognized by American Sailing as superior to anything else around, and they have adopted them as American Sailing standard texts. These are Coastal Navigation & Piloting used for the AS-105 course level and Docking Techniques used for the AS-118  Docking Endorsement.

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Our Offshore Training Cruises Preparation Guide has been developed and evolved over a twenty year period based on our extensive experience in conducting, to date, more than 325 advanced training cruises of 400 to 1,500 miles each.

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We are an American Sailing affiliate school, so all of our students have the option of continuing their education with other schools.  However, we feel that the American Sailing material provides a floor for our program and we strive to go above and beyond that level.   Particularly at the upper level classes, we feel we far exceed the American Sailing standard and most of our students do as well.

 

Well, there are some of the reasons to choose the Maryland School of Sailing & Seamanship, and we have been recognized by many as a top notch school which is a cut above the others in terms of the thoroughness of our program. A look at feedback from our graduates says a lot about the subject.

 

I hope this at least partly answers the questions. If not, please give us a call to inquire further.

 

Captain Frank Mummert